PSA: First Stage Presents: That Scottish Play, aka MacBeth!

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Milwaukee, WI – March 10, 2021 – Next up for First Stage’s Young Company, the Theater Academy’s award-winning training program for advanced high school actors, will be MACBETH, Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy, infamously known as the cursed Scottish play. The play will be performed in the newly renovated, theater-in-the round Goodman Mainstage Hall at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. Directed by First Stage Young Company faculty member Marcella Kearns, with fight and intimacy direction by Christopher Elst, MACBETH is filled with ferocious battles, supernatural horrors, famously gorgeous poetry and some of the Bard’s most vivid characters. Tempted by an evil prophecy from a trio of witches and encouraged by his Lady ever deeper into his own dark ambition, Macbeth rages a bloody path to the throne of Scotland and the forces of destruction are unleashed. Sponsored by United Performing Arts Fund

MACBETH runs March 25 – April 3, 2022 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, located at 325 W. Walnut Street in downtown Milwaukee. Tickets are $15. Tickets are available online at firststage.org or through the First Stage Box Office at (414) 267-2961. Performance runtime is approximately 2 hours plus an intermission. Suggested for families and young people ages 13+.   

Director Marcella Kearns had this to say about the production: “When I was a kid, my military father told me tales of the downfall of a Scottish warrior who had saved his people. I didn’t realize until I was much older that Macbeth was how I learned to love Shakespeare – even before I knew who the playwright was.    

MACBETH demands of its actors prowess with language. Strength for radical physical transformation and combat. Courage and resilience for gazing into the brightest and the murkiest aspects of the human spirit. As Young Company, the cast has brought this arsenal of tools from day one.” 

Added Young Company Director Matt Daniels: “More than 400 years after it was written, Macbeth remains scarily of the moment. This exploration of ambition and its pitfalls is one of Shakespeare’s tightest plays and will be expertly led by longtime Young Company faculty member Marcella Kearns with fight choreography by Christopher Elst. This play is fast, furious and terrifying, and a great way to welcome Young Company’s award-winning Shakespeare chops to the remodeled Goodman Mainstage Hall, where battles for the vast Scottish landscape will be right in the audience’s lap.” 

Young Company Performance Projects are actor-driven presentations using elemental production values. By stripping down to a nearly bare stage, the connection of actor to audience is enhanced, and the words of the play come alive in exciting ways. These fully rehearsed studio projects allow First Stage’s award-winning students to showcase their graduate level skills with full-length material, from Shakespeare to American classics to pieces commissioned specially for them. 

For tickets or more information about MacBeth or First Stage, visit them here!!

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